Connecticut head coach Kevin Ollie reacts during the first half of an NCAA basketball game against Cincinnati, Saturday, March 2, 2013, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/David Kohl)
Photo: David Kohl, Associated Press

Connecticut head coach Kevin Ollie talks with his team during a timeout during an NCAA college basketball game against Cincinnati , Saturday, March 2, 2013, in Cincinnati. Cincinnati won 61-56. (AP Photo/David Kohl)
Photo: David Kohl, Associated Press

Connecticut head coach Kevin Ollie talks with his team during a...

Connecticut head coach Kevin Ollie gestures during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Georgetown in Storrs, Conn., Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Georgetown won 79-78. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Photo: Jessica Hill, Associated Press

STORRS -- Last to leave the Madison Square Garden locker room and last to board the team bus, Kevin Ollie didn't want to talk moral victory after his Huskies dropped a close one, 69-65, to N.C. State in early December.

As he exited the MSG elevator around midnight, Ollie -- wearing the scowl of a loss and his blue coaches' warm-up -- recited one of his favorite lines: "We have enough here."

Cameras on or off, Kevin Ollie was always a believer. As it turns out, UConn -- playing with a depleted frontcourt and facing a postseason ban -- did have enough. The Huskies won 20 games, a figure few deemed possible at the season's beginning.

Past the storm of his first year, Ollie can't exhale just yet.

"When the spring semester is over with, I might exhale and go on a trip or something," Ollie says. "I'm just going to work until then and make sure (the players) know what we have to do academically so we finish strong with these grades. We don't want a team to go through what we went through."

What UConn went through made its season among the most fascinating in program history. Two days removed from its finale, Ollie -- in dark dress pants and a checkered sweater -- recounts the year from his office.

The room is filled with Huskies memorabilia: Photos of Ollie as a pro; an enormous shot of Pittsburgh's Gary McGhee stumbling to the ground as Kemba Walker launches a buzzer-beating jumper in the 2011 Big East quarterfinal; and of course, the three national championship trophies, the cut-down nets draped over each one.

Displayed prominently underneath a large flat-screen TV is the U.S. Armed Forces Trophy, the keepsake from Ollie's first career victory, his favorite memory from the season.

Ollie declares that adding to this trophy collection is not his top priority.

"I never set out to play basketball for money," he explains. "I loved the game, and I wanted to make a team, but I never said, `I'm going to make a team and I'm going to make this money and it's all gravy.' I wanted to compete at the highest level, and then the money chased me. As we get better as a team, the wins will chase us, the national championships will come. I truly believe that."

"My goal," he continues, "is to make these kids better human beings and assets in the community. ... My goal is to make them understand that it's more than themselves -- it's something beyond that. And if you reach beyond that, you can have something special."

SAME OLD DRIVE

Ollie has always loved to speak about these intangible accomplishments, but it was clear that the wins and losses mattered -- a lot. He seemed irritated after UConn dropped tight ones at St. John's and Cincinnati. The silence of defeat filled the MSG elevator that December night following the loss to N.C. State. After the double-overtime defeat versus Georgetown, during which UConn surrendered a seven-point lead with 2:03 remaining, Ollie was "depressed." Jim Calhoun entered the locker room afterward, telling the team how well it had played. He couldn't help Ollie, though.

"I had to pick myself up, which is fine," he says.

The greatest thing he learned in Year One, he says, was to appreciate the wins: to spend an hour with his family, to have a single scoop of ice cream with his wife -- a tradition after victories.

Time with the family was precious. On his off-days, Ollie was at all corners of the country recruiting. He was seen in high school gyms far more than the normal college head coach. That's because, he concedes, he was not in a normal situation.

"I thought I had to let everyone know that UConn is alive," he says, "and ya'll better still watch out on the recruiting trail because this is who I am and I'm still going to outwork every guy that I possibly can."

It's a glimpse at the scrappy, brutally competitive side of Ollie, the reason wins and losses -- though secondary goals -- meant so much. The other side, as the players like to joke, is "the preacher" in him. He can't help but to use some of those one-liners.

"After pain, there's always promise." "Ya'll crack a door, but we're going to open it wide with our effort." "They didn't let their eyesight, they let their faithsight understand where they were going."

UConn's faithsight took it to seven overtimes, five of them victories. To explain the success, Ollie points to team-building exercises in the preseason, the 10-point comeback against Quinnipiac at the Paradise Jam and, naturally, the season opener.

"The Michigan State game was like, `Alright, we're not going easily,'" Ollie says.

You can only assume that UConn learned its faithsight from Ollie, who had the pressure of a seven-month contract to go along with the challenge of replacing a Hall of Famer. Looking back, Ollie insists that he wasn't afraid to fail, a characteristic that his team adopted.

Ironically, it was a failure -- at least in terms of wins and losses -- that sealed Warde Manuel's decision to grant Ollie a long-term deal. Manuel told CBS Sports in February that, because of UConn's effort and the manner in which Ollie handled himself, the N.C. State defeat was the clincher.

Ollie remembers almost everything. He's great with names and faces. Before UConn's Big East opener at Marquette, he hugged the bellhop at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, a place he called home for a few months as a member of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks in 2002-03.

Yet somehow, he doesn't recall the exact moment Manuel informed him of his decision. He remembers that it was at the XL Center, and that it was in front of the entire team after a pregame shootaround. Maybe Maryland Eastern Shore on Dec. 17 or Fordham on the 22nd?

"It could have been Fordham," he says.

Following the contract agreement, it was mostly smooth sailing for the Huskies. Among the highlights: A convincing win on Notre Dame's home floor, an unthinkable victory at Providence that saw UConn get outrebounded by 31, and an eight-point victory over sixth-ranked Syracuse.

BUILDING THROUGH ADVERSITY

At 19-7, trouble lied ahead in the form of a viscous injury bug, a rash of misfortune that Ollie had never seen at any level.

"It was like, `Wow, what else can happen?'" Ollie says. "But the enemy is spiritual, too. They know what blessings are coming around the corner and their job is to get you distracted off the blessings and make you lose hope."

He returns to "faithsight," which he defines as thinking -- through faith -- that you can improve any situation. He says he'd take the season-ending Providence victory over a win against Georgetown. As he reflects, he decides that the devastating loss to the Hoyas and the string of injuries helped "set us up for what we did in the end."

"That's how I look at life -- bad things happen and there has to be some sunshine right around the corner," he says. "You just have to keep seeking it, and that's why we had that epic victory against Providence."

There's more to Kevin Ollie than wins and losses, but as victory No. 20 rolls through his mind, he savors it for the shortest of moments.